Thursday, July 4, 2013

Giving God a Reason to Grieve

"Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart" (Genesis 6:5-6)

The news is out.  It's official.  Sources are telling us that morality has died in America.  The Barna Group has just published its latest findings revealing that currently 53% of Americans favor changing the laws to grant full recognition and acceptance of the homosexual and transgender lifestyle.  People are slapping each other on the back and congratulating each other that at long last we as a people have attained "enlightenment."  Morality as we knew it is a thing of the past, so they say, and it is time to rejoice and be glad.  There is no pulse.  This is a new day.

Why is it that mankind seems doomed never to learn anything from his own history?  Not one time, beloved, not a single time has any generation of people ever abandoned a moral foundation and benefited from that choice.  Check your facts.  Such a disastrous condition as we are now told is here in America does not indicate advancement or enlightenment but rather the further unraveling of our moral fiber, the further decay of a once strong and godly nation.

But that is just the rub, is it not?  God.  What a pesky being He has been in the lives of so many for so long.  Always wanting to have things His own way, always wanting to tell us what is right and what is not.  So here we are.  We have finally silenced God...or so a majority of Americans believe, according to the latest statistics.  We are "free" from all restraints, free to make our own choices, free to follow our own dreams, free to realize destinies of our own design and our own creating.  Free.

But for one small problem.  None of it is true.  Not a single word.  Morality is not on life-support, much less dead!   In fact, morality is not even sniffling.  Morality is as strong and robust as it has always been.  Why?  Because the moral standard by which we are judged, beloved, is the creation of God, not the wishy-washy back and forth of man's sinful mind.  Oh, God is grieving to be sure!  But God is not passive about us.  He may grieve over our choices but He is anything but inactive.  God is doing what God has always done and will do throughout the remainder of human time.  He is appealing to us in love.  He is reaching out in mercy.  He is using a myriad of ways to remind us that He alone is sovereign and that we are not.  He is seeking our yieldedness and our obedience.  He is inviting us to turn to Him in heartfelt repentance so that He may flood our hearts with His forgiveness and fill our beings with His love and His power.

So go ahead.  Check for a pulse all you want.  Make your declarations that morality is dead in America and that we are all enlightened and liberated.  God will continue to remind us that only in Jesus Christ can we know true enlightenment and find eternal life.  Don't be so quick to write morality's epitaph, America.  God has already declared that the day will come when His righteousness will cover the earth like a flood.  Mankind had stood at this crossroad before.  And God is still there and is still speaking.  More than that, He is acting.

Ron